We're on Our Way to a New Worldwide Patriot Act

By almost any objective measure, the terror attacks in Paris last weekend were a horrifying success for the perpetrators, both in terms of the sheer carnage, but also in the political tumult that has followed as world governments scramble to react. The latter is by no means of secondary concern. In fact, it can often be the blow of more lingering significance, as we saw in the period following 9/11. The resulting political chaos of the attack, and the bolstering of a sprawling national security apparatus continues to reverberate throughout our public policy today. It's the type of reactionary policy that results in, say, a terror watch list some 700,000 strong. But considering recent reports that at least 2,000 of those people have been able to legally purchase firearms despite being on the list, you might not be crazy to wonder about the effectiveness of such restrictions on civil liberties.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

It's not surprising to see politicians in France and Belgium, where a number of the attackers came from—including alleged mastermind Abdelhamid Abaaoud, killed in yesterday's raid in Saint-Denis—calling for sweeping new security measures, some of which you might interpret as effectively de facto criminalizing Muslims in their own countries.

Speaking before the national assembly on Thursday, French prime minister Manuel Valls asked for a three month extension of the country's current declaration of a 12-day state of emergency. Such a decree provides broad powers for police and government in France, including arrests without warrants, the closure of public venues and meeting places, implementation of house searches, and censure of the media.

"This bill will also encourage the closing of mosques if they become too radical," Valls said. "This bill is the answer for the right of a free country facing chaos."

The measure passed the lower house of parliament and will now be considered by the Senate on Friday.

Meanwhile, in Belgium, the small country that has seen a vastly disproportionate share of its people travel to Syria and Iraq in recent years, Prime Minister Charles Michel has called for even stricter security standards, including measures that would require Belgians who are on a terror watch list to wear ankle bracelets, increasing the period suspects can be held from 24 hours to 72, shuttering websites that preach hatred, convicting or expelling those who preach jihad, and closing mosques that are believed to be engaged in similar radical ideology.

"Religious freedom is guaranteed by the constitution, but places of worship cannot become places to spread jihadism," Michel said.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

In the States, a growing number of governors have come out this week saying they would refuse to accept any Syrian refugees into their states, with presidential candidates quickly falling in line, like Marco Rubio, who dismissed the Obama administration's assurances that potential refugees are thoroughly vetted. "There is no background-check system in the world that allows us to find that out, because who do you call in Syria to background-check them?" Rubio asked. One politician, the mayor of Roanoke, Virginia, has even gone so far as to evoke the period of Japanese internment as a model for what might need to be done today.

Not to be outdone, Donald Trump hinted at what the handling of potential terror threats under his administration might look like.

"Certain things will be done that we never thought would happen in this country in terms of information and learning about the enemy," he said this week. "We're going to have to do things that were frankly unthinkable a year ago." Among the ideas he said will need to be considered are a database of Muslim Americans and the closing of mosques. "You're going to have to watch and study the mosques, because a lot of talk is going on in the mosques," he told MSNBC on Monday.

It's enough to curdle the blood of civil liberty-minded citizens around the world. Then again, considering how Abaaoud boasted on numerous occasions about his ability to travel back and forth between Belgium and Syria undetected, despite his image and identity being known to authorities—"I suddenly saw my picture all over the media, but alhamdulillah (thanks be to God), the kuffar (infidels) were blinded by Allah," he said—it's hard not to wonder if maybe there isn't some merit in the idea of closely monitoring potential terror suspects.

And that right there, that confusion on my part, is, beyond the unthinkable suffering of the people who were murdered by these terrorists in France last week, just the beginning of the aftershocks of any truly successful terrorist attack: We start to question who we are. If ISIS has their way, we might soon, like we did after 9/11, end up forgetting entirely.

As the House is set to vote on a GOP bill that would create even stricter standards for allowing Syrian refugees into the country (update: it passed), it's easy to see what the even further xenophobic, terror-addled United States of the near future will look like. We're already most of the way there. Consider a meeting in Fredericksburg, Virginia, this week about a proposed new community center and mosque that erupted into a heated argument.

"We don't want it because you are terrorists. Every one of you are terrorists. I don't care what you say," one man opposed to the plan yelled. "You can smile at me. You can say whatever you want, but every Muslim is a terrorist."

A Part of Hearst Digital Media
Esquire participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means we may get paid commissions on editorially chosen products purchased through our links to retailer sites.